New bill would make open access to federal research mandatory

For the last several years, research funded by the National Institutes of Health has been subject to its public access policy, which ensures that resulting research publications are made open access within a year of their publication. For almost as long, some members of Congress have been trying to overturn that policy, which some publishers fear will cut into their revenues. The latest attempt, the Research Works Act, was introduced in January, and would allow any publisher to keep papers in its journals from being made open access.

Today, some members of Congress have introduced a bill that would not only support the NIH policy, but expand it. The Federal Research Public Access Act is being introduced in both the House and Senate, with a bipartisan group of sponsors in each body. The act would significantly shorten the waiting period between publication in a subscription journal and the point where a paper is made open access, dropping it from a year to six months. It would also expand the scope of the policy, applying it to any federal agency with a budget of $100 million or more.

The bill argues that “the research, if shared and effectively disseminated, will advance science and improve the lives and welfare of people of the United States and around the world.” To that end, each agency will be required to ensure that publication doesn’t interfere with their right to reproduce the paper, and create a online public repository that will house the works once they become open access. Preliminary data, such as lab notes and meeting presentations, are specifically excluded from this requirement.

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